It was now arranged that Mr. Heywood, furnished with a considerable sum of money in gold, should set out alone on the following night for their new destination, and make the necessary preparations for their reception, while his wife, through her agent, should endeavor to dispose of the estate.  As it would require some time for this, and as the arrangements at Chicago could not well be completed within several months, it was settled that they should meet at Albany, early in the following autumn, where they should proceed to take possession of their new abode.  For his better security and freedom from interruption, Mr. Heywood, while travelling, was to assume a feigned name, but his own was to be resumed immediately after his arrival at Chicago, for neither he nor his family could for a moment think of increasing the suspicion of guilt, by continuing a name that was not their own; and, finally, as a last measure of precaution, the free servants of the establishment, had, with the exception of Catharine, whom they were to take with them, been discharged, while a purchaser having fortunately been found, the slaves, with the estate, were handed over to a new master, proverbial for his kindness to that usually oppressed race.  By these means they found themselves provided with funds more than adequate to all their future wants, the great bulk of the sum arising from the sale of the estate being vested in two of the most stable banks of the Union.

With the money he took with him, carefully deposited in his saddlebags, for he performed the whole of the journey on horseback, Mr. Heywood had caused the cottage already described, to be built and furnished from Detroit, in what, at that period, and so completely at the ultima thule of American civilization, was considered a style of great luxury.  He had, however, shortly prior to his setting out for Albany, purchased several hundred acres of land, about two miles up the Southern branch of the Chicago, leaving instructions with Le Noir, whom he had engaged for a long term of service, to erect upon it a log building and outhouses.  This he had been induced to do from that aching desire for physical exertion which had been familiar to him from boyhood, and which he felt could never be sufficiently indulged within the limited compass of the little village itself—­subjected as he must be to the observation of the curious and the impertinent.  He returned from Albany after a few months’ absence, in the autumn of 1809, bringing with him his friends who occupied the cottage, while he himself obtained their assent that he should inhabit the farm house, completed soon after his return.  Here he cut with his own hands, many a cord of the wood that his servants floated down in rafts, not only for his own family, but to supply the far more extensive wants of the garrison, with which, however, he had little or no intercourse, beyond that resulting from his business relations.